by TJ Park
There were two families seated by the fire: one related by blood, the other by bloody trade. All were secretly praying there was magic in the stuff.
UNBIDDEN PART IV: RARER MONSTERS
Chapter Thirteen
The night ticked past too slowly. Doug canvassed the sombre chambers of the house, skittish at every corner, hesitant before every dark space. The regular sweeps had fallen solely on his shoulders. Mick and Rob were convalescing from their injuries, Janet wouldn’t let the children out of her sight, and Warlock was as useless as tits on a bull. Doug was supposedly making sure the other rooms were still secure, a maddening proposition since all the windows were broken and gaping wide.
Returning again to the living room he caught Janet’s eye. Doug looked away first. She was keeping watch, too, having no faith in his abilities. Lauren and Scott had fallen into a reluctant sleep, as had their father. Cleaned of his injuries and neatly bandaged, the lightly snoring grazier sat within touching distance of his children. The Winchester lay across his lap. A cold, half-empty coffee mug was still grasped in his hand on the armrest. Janet let it be, not wanting to disturb him.
Mick looked to be sitting forward in his armchair, brooding. Then Doug saw he was doing it asleep, a fixed frown on his face. Doug had inexpertly patched him up and he was looking somewhat better. Despite that, the stress of the last few days and the batterings he’d had – first from the grazier and then that thing, that “familiar” – was telling. He looked worse than old … he seemed broken.
Warlock was still up and awake. The reason for his insomnia was obvious. He was doped to his jittering eyeballs. He stood before the only intact window in the living room, his world reduced to the point of his outstretched finger as he traced small pentagrams on the glass. Not a smart thing to do. He seemed unaware he had company, though Doug’s reflection loomed large behind him.
Doug was just turning away when Warlock said softly: “You think I’m a piss-poor excuse for a man, don’t you?” His head was raised, watching Doug’s reflection in the glass. “But I never killed anyone before. You made me do that.”
Doug’s outrage was strengthened by having to keep his voice down.
“You stinking hypocrite. You’re a drug dealer. You sell death.”
Warlock flinched and focused on his tracings on the glass, yet his voice remained steady. “I only give them what they ask for. I don’t think that pilot asked for a bullet, do you?”
That shut Doug down. He stood there a few moments longer, hoping for a comeback to materialise. It didn’t.
“Look, Doug,” Warlock said, his drug-stoked face suddenly falling apart. “Don’t be mad. It’s okay. I can do it again if you want me to. It just takes getting used to.”
This was worse. Doug had to get away from that pitiful need to appease.
“Just don’t stand so close to the windows,” he said, hurrying away.
“Sure, Doug. Sure. Thanks.”
A candle atop the fridge provided the kitchen’s sole source of illumination. As soon as Doug was out of sight to those in the living room, he slumped a few inches. The tirades of his ex-wife and the admonitions of judges, the tacked-on sympathy of prison psychologists and the rabbiting of chaplains – none of these had ever cut quite like his short exchange with the junkie. He stepped over to the sink to wash up. But the tap was dry, the handle spinning loosely in his hand. He leaned heavily over the sink, finding himself at one of those junctures where he could laugh, howl, or just shoot up the place.
Before he could decide on any one of those things, the shadows around him were banished by a warm light. Janet had entered the kitchen, setting a gas lantern down on the counter. “If you want water, I’ve saved some in the plastic jugs over there in the corner. I also filled the tubs in the laundry and bathroom.”
Doug resented her. Here he was, struggling to think one step ahead, while she left him behind in her dust. She busied herself with an antique wood-burning stove, a curio straight out of one of those country-style home magazines, the electric version next to it now a useless lump.
Doug spoke into the sink. “I see it’s trying to cut us off completely.”
“What? The water? Maybe it did do that. But I have a hunch that when you and Rob were shooting up the place a stray shot or two hit the water tank. I saved as much as I could before it ran out.”
Doug could imagine the familiar having a good laugh over that. Even though it ran on four legs, he’d stopped thinking of it as a mere creature quite some time ago.
He drew a chair out from the kitchen table and glanced at his watch. Dismay made him sit heavily, dragging the chair back. He looked at Janet.
“What time have you got?”
She looked. “Quarter to one.”
“Christ.”
“I feel like I’ve been up a whole week,” Janet replied, without a jot of empathy.
“Hour of the wolf.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s three hours away. Feels like it’s happening now.”
She stared at him, impatient.
“Between four and five. It’s the time when most people pass away. Hour of the wolf.” He smiled faintly. “Probably just another way of saying it’s darkest before the dawn.”
She nodded. “Yes, I might have heard of it.”
To Doug, she seemed to dismiss it out of hand. Of course she would. She and her family started their day around that time. It never bothered them.
Doug felt the urge to explain, nodded toward the next room. “The old bloke’s always had the knack of waking up just before four no matter how long or short the day.” He smiled gently, thinking of the old man. “It didn’t matter if he had passed out drunk earlier the same night, or gone to bed an hour before. He’s always had to see the dawn out before he could shut his eyes again.” Doug grunted. “He said he had a fear of being carted off in his sleep without ever knowing about it.”
“Was it a habit he started in prison?”
He looked at her as she worked at preparing the wood stove for lighting. Her face was neutral. Was she honestly curious, or trying to get a rise out of him? Either way, she’d been short about it and he was inclined to pay her back.
“Probably. What’s with the Vatican gift shop?”
“What?”
“Those crosses you’ve kept hidden away, even from your hubbie … you a closet Christian?”
“That’s none of your business,” she said.
“Yeah, you’re right.” He meant it. The night was miserable enough without him adding to it. He got up to leave.
“If you stop being a smartarse for two minutes, I’ll tell you.”
He sat down again. “Fair enough.”
It did not occur to him at first, but eventually he realised she was literally making him wait the whole two minutes, or close to.
The only sounds in the kitchen were the scrunching of paper that she fed into the grate of the old oven. She went out of the room and came back with some scraps from the fireplace woodpile, plus a few bright coals on top of a poker. He could not quite admit to himself that it soothed him to watch her work. Her promise of an explanation seemed to have dissipated into thin air, and he was on the verge of picking up the torch and scouting the perimeter of the house again when she began to speak.
“My parents were religious. Mum more than dad. She lost two brothers in Burma and I suppose it was a lot easier for her to picture them in the lap of God rather than rotting in the mud where they fell.”
She blew on the coals to liven them.
“Mum was in training to be a nun before she met dad. I still haven’t found a way of saying that without people thinking they’re hearing the first part of a dirty joke. I knew nothing about it until I was fifteen. My parents scared the hell out of me the day they sat me down to tell me about it. I thought they were going to tell me they were getting a divorce, or that I was adopted.”
She paused, watching fire tentatively take hold in the stove.
“Do you remember the cattle caught in the fence?” she asked eventually.
He didn’t answer. None was necessary.
“I’ve seen something like that once before …”
Balled-up paper bloomed, painting Janet’s face red in the brief hot light.
“One afternoon I was coming home on the school bus. We had one of those large buses, though it was a small school … barely enough of us to fill a minibus, really. Anyway. It looked so strange … like we were approaching a dust storm that stood absolutely still. Held perfectly in place like it was waiting for us. For me …”
***
The bus slowed. Up ahead, flashes jabbed blue and red through the hanging caul of dust. A policeman with a handkerchief over his nose and mouth waved a glowing baton. With hunched shoulders, he signalled for the bus to stop and turn back.
The bus could have taken a detour, but that would have meant going several kilometres out of its way, so the driver pretended he had misinterpreted the policeman’s signals, swinging the bus round to bounce along the precarious grade that ran parallel to the highway.
The policeman ran over to try and cut them off, stabbing the other way with his baton in no uncertain terms. The bus driver nodded his head vigorously while pointing forward and mouthing words that in essence said: “Yeah, yeah, I’m going the way you want.” He sped up as if that was what the policeman was motioning him to do.
As he drove alongside the accident, the bus driver caught angry looks from other police at the scene, but they didn’t bother with him because they had their hands full. There were some emergency vehicles on the road, mostly sedans with writing on their sides. None of the bigger trucks had arrived yet. The flashing lights were like lighthouse beams taking wild swings at each other in thick fog. They roved over the cause of the dust storm, a long-nosed Kenworth cab, which had come to rest with its wheels skyward. The two trailers it was hauling were torn from their steel chassis, smashed into kindling. One of the trailers was folded over the crumpled cab, suspended in midair like an ocean wave about to come crashing down on top of it.
Scattered over the road were the hefty, broken carcasses of cattle. In some places they lay three deep. A few were still alive, mewling in pain and terror.
Several of the younger children on the bus put their hands over their ears to shut out the cattle’s cries and the clap of gunshots. One policeman, oblivious to the passing school bus, was taking care of the cattle, making each first shot count.
But one poor beast could not be put so swiftly out of its misery.
It shrieked loudly from behind a piece of wreckage that most of the rescue crew were attending. At first, the children on the bus thought it was a piece of the truck, but then they saw it was a mangled car and that the screaming came from inside.
***
“Oh, we were pretty upset by what we saw. A lot of the kids were crying. But we were excited, too. I remember how we ran from one end of the bus to the other to make sure we took in everything. We couldn’t wait to get home and tell our parents.”
Janet smiled bitterly. “I didn’t get the chance.”
Doug averted his eyes, discomforted by the intensity that radiated from her.
“I hadn’t even recognised the car, it was so …” She raised a hand to brush away tears, and was disturbed to find none forthcoming. “I never figured out which one of them I heard screaming. They might both have been alive at that point. Neither died instantly. I suppose I could have found out. I found out lots of other things. Like the driver of the truck hadn’t slept for over fifty hours. He broke both wrists and lost his licence for eighteen months. No jail time. In those days they barely cared if you killed someone while driving a vehicle.”
She studied the flickering fire in the stove. Somehow its light made the kitchen as confining as a confessional box.
“It was bad enough, what happened to them, without their daughter seeing the aftermath and being thrilled by it.”
“You didn’t know,” Doug replied, well aware it was something she’d probably told herself a million times before.
Her eyes looked at him, then away, seeing a period in her life that made the familiar stalking them almost kind in comparison.
“My father died at the scene before they could cut him out. He was lucky. Do you know how long it took Jesus to die on the cross?”
“I don’t –” Doug fumbled.
“I asked our family priest. He wouldn’t tell me. He pretended he didn’t know. I found a theologian in the phonebook willing to tell me. Six hours. From mid-morning to mid-afternoon. My mother took nine days. And for every one she was in agony.”
She came closer and held out her right hand for Doug to inspect.
“I still have the scars.”
She kept it there a while, so Doug could catch the detail in the poor light. Perhaps only such a base, uneven light could bring out the old, old imperfections in her skin. Small, white crescents – raised up individually or in clusters. Most of them on her lower arm and wrist, but scores of them also traversed her hand, embedded in the fleshy pads of her palms and riding over the knuckles, branded in the webbing. Fingernail scars. He couldn’t imagine what strength of will it took for her to have sat there and endured it. Unless of course, she wanted to suffer too, felt that she deserved it.
“I tried to pray while I sat next to the bed, holding mum’s hand. I did try. But I could never finish one. Not one. Mum never let me.”
Janet stiffened, suddenly self-conscious. Sometime during his inspection of her scar tissue Doug had taken her hand in his.
She drew away, and he let go reluctantly.
She put on a crooked smile. The well of bitterness was deep. “Let’s say the experience put a few cracks in some of the beliefs I was brought up with.”
“Why did you keep all that stuff, then?”
She was suddenly awkward, turning away, busying herself with the stove again.
“It belonged to my mother. It’s not mine to throw away.”
Doug wanted to offer something that would help ease her mind, but anything he could think of was trifling in the face of her experience.
“I’ve got a fridge full of thawing steak I should do something with,” Janet said brusquely, not turning around. “You mind bringing me some more wood?”
Offered an escape, Doug took it.
***
Warlock had taken a downer to get some shut-eye. A cushion under his head, he lay in a foetal position on the floor, close to Mick. Except for the occasional tremor in his limbs, like a dreaming dog, he was not disturbed by the old man’s heavy snoring.
Doug dithered, deciding how to carry both the firewood and the rifle at the same time. He didn’t want to let go of one to take the other. That was when he thought it could be a good idea for him to catch up on some sleep, too. His mind was molasses. He put down the rifle and started loading up one arm with wood.
A faint noise drifted from down the hall, the flush of a toilet. Totally unremarkable, and normally reassuring. But something about it – just a hint that something was out of place – made him nervous. He counted the sleeping heads in the room, then turned to see Janet still moving about in the kitchen. He counted a second time while the wood started to slide unheeded from the cradle of his arm.
From the hallway came the faint flat bang of a toilet seat coming down. Obviously done by someone trained in the observance that women also lived in the house. Doug juggled the wood to stop it from clattering to the floor and waking people up, at the same time shouting, “Hey!” He put the gathered wood down gently, so as not to make any noise that would startle anyone, while still shouting urgently, “Hey! Hey!”
Mick and Rob woke fast. The grazier was standing with his rifle up and ready before Doug could retrieve his own. Mick never moved from his chair, but his eyes were wide awake. He pulled the pistol higher in his lap. Janet joined them, butcher’s knife in a hand shiny with the thin blood of raw steak.
“What is it?” she
and Rob asked almost in sync.
Lauren was reluctant to rouse. Maybe her eyes had opened to look once, but they were deliberately squeezed shut now, her mouth crimped to brace against more hurt. Fully ensconced under his blanket, Scott merely turned over in his sleep. Warlock snorted loudly before sitting up with a vacant look on his face.
“Someone’s just finished using the toilet,” Doug told them.
“They shouldn’t have done that,” Janet said.
At the same time Rob said, “So?”
Doug eyed their immediate number. “Who?”
They looked round, everyone doing their own quick headcounts. Doug, having done it twice already, did it a third time anyway, hoping against hope that it would add up differently.
Lauren’s eyes went wide and joined in to do her own count. She did it lying on her side on her camp bed, too frightened to move, but her frightened eyes were alert, darting around. Scott was wrapped inside his blanket on the couch, only a tuft of hair sticking out. He remained oblivious to the whole drama, deep in the untroubled slumber only available to those young and sure of themselves.
Down the hall, a door could be heard swinging, then rapping off a doorstop.
Any lingering sleep-daze was gone from the assembly in a blink. Mick stood up, giving a passable imitation of someone not hurting as he did so.
“Maybe the toilet’s busted,” squeaked Warlock. He was close to being overtaken by his customary panic, convincing no-one.
Guns were pointed at the dark hallway entrance. The soft thumping of hands blindly seeking out the walls could be heard. Guns were readied.
Scott emerged from the hall, rubbing his eyes. He stopped, frowning at everyone giving him their undivided attention. “What?” he said.
He saw their gaze pull away from him to the couch and back again. He read it as disapproval. “I had to go!”
Then all attention was on the couch, and the slumbering form of Scott Clarkson. The sleeper was on his side, facing the corner of the couch, away from his admirers. The boy standing in the hallway looked there, too, but he hadn’t yet seen the problem.